Sleeps with Dogs (21 page)

I'd been prepared for Larry's condition to have declined and expected I'd need to watch him closely throughout the week, keeping him comfortable and making sure he got his meds down with the new liquid diet. But that sentence, tacked on to the end of a hastily scribbled note, gave me great pause. I wasn't aware when I'd signed on for this week that Sara and Andy might be outsourcing his end days to me. Once I actually saw Larry, I was struck with the certainty that he would not make it through the week.

They had grossly downplayed the fragility of Larry's state. He'd essentially stopped eating. When I fed him the first night, the most he took in was some juice from the canned tuna I'd put in his chipped blue dish on top of the dryer in the mudroom. I had to force-feed him his medication, which left him understandably pissed at me. Soon after I'd emptied the syringe between his jaws, he regurgitated the meds mixed with gastric juices in foamy dribbles, his emaciated body convulsing.

The worst part, though, was the open and frankly horrific-looking sore on his side, pink and deep purple where it festered. The hair had fallen away, and he worried the exposed area incessantly so that his whole right side was damp and cowlicked. His spine and tail were even bonier than before, a wasted frame under loosely hung fur. His eyes still retained such majesty, though—gray blue and perfectly cat-eyed.

That first morning before I left the house, I got down on face level with him.

“You listen to me, Lawrence. Your parents will be home in six days, and they will be so happy to see you. You hear me?” I kissed him on his head, which had the same velvety texture as it always had. I hummed a bar of The Who's “You Better You Bet,” too, because it was the only song I could think of. Then I locked the mudroom door behind me, trying with everything in me to ignore the hot, bilious anxiety rising in my throat.

My time with Larry, Simpson, and Leilani coincided with another cat client in Alameda that requested daily visits for the week. Though the owners had another residence nearer to their workplace, they kept their cats at this second, sparsely furnished apartment by the beach. The street-facing one-bedroom unit was almost entirely given over to the cats, save for an extremely sexy candy-apple-red espresso machine that gleamed from its place on the counter in the efficiency kitchen.

The cats they kept at this apartment were all feral. I rarely saw them but for a tail poking out from behind the curtains in the living room, or glowing eyes under the bed. As I was required to be there for thirty minutes, I took my time changing the water and portioning out their food, trying to occupy as many minutes as I could laying eyes on each of the five cats who lived there. Conveniently,
that took up most of the half-hour visit, checking all of the closets and cabinets that were left ajar for the cats to wander freely through or hide within.

If any time remained, I'd stand in the kitchen admiring the machine. Next to the shabby, cat-scratched furniture, amidst the dusty clumps of fur that blew through the drab and dirty apartment, that machine was even more spectacular.

Those half hours spent in the company of the wild, reclusive cats were a welcome change from my nights across the island. Mostly because the cats—antisocial, averse to human touch, and seemingly divorced from any need for companionship beyond that which their fellow cats provided—were so refreshingly different from Simpson's campaign for food and attention and Larry's hospice care. I felt certain that these cats, were they to escape the confines of this carpeted cage, would do just fine on their own.

When I arrived back at the house in the evening, Larry was waiting on the porch banister, looking regal and wise as he tracked my movements, slowly blinking at me as I passed him on my way to the side door.

“
Buenas noches,
Larry! Why don't you come on inside for some loving?” I called to him as I entered the mudroom. I didn't think he was fooled; by loving, I meant medicating.

Leilani heard me coming, and she exploded through the dog door from the backyard, dashing excitedly from the mudroom and into the kitchen behind me. Of course, Simpson was waiting there, meowling with a fury like I hadn't fed him for days. He seemed unaware of, or unconcerned by, his comrade's rapid decline. His emergency, as ever, was getting fed. I quickly dumped a handful of cat food in Simpson's dish before leashing Leilani to go out for her walk.

As starved as she was for some individual attention, I gave her a perfunctory walk. I was preoccupied with the certainty that Sara and Andy had already said their goodbyes to Larry. With that final instruction to me,
no heroics,
they'd reconciled themselves to Larry's imminent departure from their lives.

I was racking my brain as to what I could do for him beyond just sitting by and watching him gamely carry on, however feebly. I wanted to make a
Save Larry
sign or carry him with me on my daily dog walks in a custom-made cat papoose, just so he wouldn't be alone in his last days. He probably didn't mind the solitude; maybe he even preferred it. Like the ferals I was caring for, he seemed to eschew our human fussing and fawning, preferring instead to simply carry on with the business of being a cat. But I minded.

I was all but oblivious to the streetlights coming to life along the residential streets. I instinctively stopped at the stop signs and crossed at the lights, but I jumped a foot in the air when an overwound poodle lunged at us, barking through the wrought iron bars of its fence.

Larry turned away from the Gerber beef stew I offered him that night, dignified in his demurral. I understood his refusal of food as his instinctual way of showing that he was finished trying to survive. Every time I rubbed his gums with the pudding-like substance, I felt like I was betraying this knowledge.

Biscuit was this way at the end; that's how my parents knew she was so sick. One week in early spring, she stopped touching her Alpo. After a day, rats came out of the woods and ate it all up for her. Apparently the vets knew quickly, just from palpating her stomach and organs, that she was riddled with tumors. My parents brought her home for me and my sister to see her again, though they knew it couldn't be for long. She still didn't eat; she just lay in her doghouse
on her blanket, watching me come and go with her sweet dark eyes and licking my hand appreciatively as I diligently refreshed her rat-chewed food and untouched water in hopes she might change her mind and chance a nibble.

Once I accepted that Larry's final demise was not a matter of if, but when, I settled into the routine of devoting my evenings to making him as comfortable as he could be.

Before I subjected him to the disgrace of the 1 cc of force-fed meds, he sat for oh-so-gentle strokes. I had to caress his thinning coat just so, or he shrank away like I was hurting him. If I got it right, though, he purred like he was a young cat again, angling his head up, then all the way down, and then twisting around, showing me all the pleasurable spots that remained.

Larry was notorious for spraying in the house, so when—if ever—he came inside, he was allowed only as far as the kitchen. I put his cat bed on the breakfast-nook chair next to my own, and he and I spent those dark autumnal hours together. He slept while I watched syndicated episodes of
Sex and the City
and planned the Thanksgiving menu.

I'd been studying up on my dad's methods for cooking the turkey, which included a broth-soaked undershirt or otherwise expendable-but-clean rag to cover the bird for the first few hours, among other unconventional but essential steps. It was easy enough to ignore all his instructions for making the giblet gravy, as I would not be handling or eating any of the turkey neck. I also requested my mom's stuffing recipe and my sister's famous green bean casserole made with fresh beans French-cut by hand. Even with the preplanning, though, I suspected I'd make frequent phone calls to the whole family throughout the holiday for last-minute directions and clarification.

Before I retired with Simpson to the corner bedroom, I tucked Larry into his deep round sheepskin bed and went through the ritual stroking with him. I wondered if my hands on his neck, back, and rump, which he angled in ecstasy, gave him the only pleasure there really was for him anymore.

Meanwhile, at the cat pad, the ferals seemed to be adjusting to my presence. They actually walked across the living room while I was there in the apartment, instead of keeping to the closets and cabinets or under the bed until I left. I didn't have much, or any, prior experience with wild cats, so this was an education. I was surprised at how beautiful, how dignified each cat was. I guess I'd thought that ferals were crazed beasts with an electrocuted-looking tail and razor-sharp claws, like the cats depicted on Halloween decorations. What I was realizing, though, is that these animals are not defined by their relationships to us—or lack thereof. They are defined by their cat-ness. Which is, after all, what they are. These were not pets, just cats. For the first time I understood that the one could exist apart from the other. Perhaps that was the pleasure that those particular owners experienced: observation of, not necessarily interaction with, the animals they shared their home with.

My last night at the Hansens' arrived, and Larry was nowhere to be found. I busied myself with the dog and cat who I'd all but ignored all week. On our walk, Leilani soaked up my attentions like a neglected child would, poor girl. When I fed Simpson, I pet him until he bit me in irritation. It seemed he and I just couldn't see eye-to-eye; with him, it was either never enough or way too much.

Just as I was about to throw on my coat and canvass the neighborhood for Larry, I heard his quiet call coming from the mudroom. I was so relieved to see his face that I nearly missed his weeping wound.

There was blood and fluid soaking the fur around the sore, which looked angrier than ever. He refused food and water with such polite defiance that I spared him the medication altogether. I doubted very seriously that it would do much except make him cross with me. Instead, I put his bed on the chair next to me and let him be quiet in my company, together in the warmth of the kitchen.

While he rested, I made a baked potato and turned on the television. When I turned my back to him, though, he disappeared. It didn't take me long to find him curled near the pillows in the master bedroom, as close to the smell and feeling of his owners as he could be. In all the times I'd ever stayed at the Hansens', and certainly within the span of that week, Larry had never jumped the gate that partitioned the kitchen from the other rooms. He knew his boundaries and hadn't ever trespassed into the depths of the house.

Before I went to bed myself, I restored Larry to his usual spot in the mudroom. I kissed his soft head goodnight and tried to convey some measure of comfort and love with my strokes, carefully avoiding his sickening sore. I wanted to bring him with me into the house, consequences be damned. But I left him there in his bed on the dryer and locked the door to the house.

On our last night with Biscuit, I had a fight with my parents about sleeping in the basement. I don't remember if they even conceded in the end. I just pulled the quilt off my bed and curled up next to Biscuit in the carpeted area at the base of the steps to the garage. We slept that way, her with her ratty, torn blanket and me wrapped in my own. Or she slept. I just tried to absorb the feel of her, the distinct corn-and-processed-cheese aroma of her paws that always evoked Doritos for me, and the gentle rise and fall of her belly—a place I'd rested my head so many times before. I pet her until my shoulder went numb. I must've slept at some point
because in the morning I woke to find my parents standing over us. They took her back to the vet then, where they waited while she went to sleep for good.

At some point in the night, I woke up abruptly to the sound of Larry crying. I threw on my sweatpants and climbed over the gate into the darkened kitchen, flipping on lights and unlocking the door to bring him in after all. But he wasn't in his bed. He wasn't on the steps or in the driveway. He wasn't perched on the banister, watching the street with those intelligent eyes.

In the morning, when Simpson threw himself against the locked bedroom door, I got up quickly. The anxiety of the night before had carried over into my dreams and right into the morning. I bundled up again to go out to the mudroom, but Larry's bed was still empty. I put my hand where the slight imprint of his body fit, but the sheepskin lining was cold.

I left a note for Andy and Sara, due to arrive home that afternoon, in the same place they'd left theirs.
Larry took off in the night and I haven't seen him since. I am probably overreacting. He always comes back!
My false bravado was hardly convincing.

Had Sara and Andy been my own clients, and had I been in a position to engage in communication with them as such, I likely would have been far more forthright about my feelings. But as it was, the cordial, newsy note left on the butcher block was the extent of our business-related correspondence. All complaints and non-urgent concerns were directed to my colleagues; they could decide to forward my input on to the client, or not. Yet another tricky nuance of the business that I didn't fully grasp until it unfolded in real time. I had to learn these lessons as I went, and sometimes they proved far more painful than I could ever have anticipated.

I packed all of my things and made the bed, vacuumed the
floor, and scooped out the litter box. I did the dishes and checked the bathroom and bedside tables for any forgotten jewelry or hair ties. I tossed my stuff into the car, still looking for the shape of Larry by the porch. From a distance, I mistook the white of a grocery sack beneath my car for his shadow.